The present invention relates to an identity card or similar data carrier having a copy protection element provided in at least a partial area and containing a metal layer in which markings in the form of characters, patters or the like are incorporated with a laser beam.
Identity cards in the form of credit cards, bank cars, cash cards, authorization cards, identity cards, passport personalization pages or the like are used in a great variety of areas, including e.g. cashless money transfer, access control systems or various service systems. These identity cards generally have data relating to the card owner which are applied in the so-called personalization process. A widespread way of applying these data is to inscribe the data in the card by means of a laser beam.
The German Patent Application No. De-B 2 907 004 thus describes an identity card with two cover films and a card inlay in which the personalization or data can thus be incorporated on the card inlay in a last operation after completion of the card.
Since the quality of reproductions produced with modern copying machines has increased very greatly there is an increasing need to produce such identity cards or design them with features in such a way as to prevent reproduction of the personalization data or other data applied to the card.
The French Patent Application No. FR 2 565 268 has proposed for these purposes applying to documents a metallic background on which the information to be protected is printed. Such a metallic background causes direct reflection of the light rays falling on the metallic surface. The detector is usually disposed in a copying machine so that it can detect the light fractions diffusely backscattered by the original but not the light reflected into defined solid angle element. When reproduced by a copier metallic surfaces thus lead to a black surface on the copy instead of a metallically reflecting one.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,680,459 discloses a card to which a stripe is applied that is suitable for laser recording of information. This stripe has a metal layer in its interior in which microwriting or pictures are inscribed with the aid of a laser beam in the form of a dot pattern.